XENIA — With a one-run loss on July 29, the Xenia Scouts’ 2018 Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League baseball season came to a close.
Xenia lost by an 8-7 score to the visiting Richmond Jazz on the Grady’s Field artificial home turf at the Athletes In Action Sports Complex grounds. With the narrow loss, the Scouts lost nine of their final 10 games of the season to finish with a 10-32 record.
The Scouts, the 2016 South Division champs, finished sixth in the seven-team South in 2018.
Nick Tuttle, a freshman from The Masters University in Santa Clarita, Calif., led the Scouts in batting average with a .349 mark. He also led the team in hits with 38 and runs batted in with 17.
Truman Brown of Austin Peay, University of Dallas’s Luke Boylson and The Masters’ Felix King finished atop the Xenia list in home runs with two each.
Baylor’s Ryan Bertelsman was the speediest Scout with 21 stolen bases.
Cairn University senior Sam Dralle was Xenia’s pitching leader with four saves. He tied Ohio Northern sophomore Thomas Fleser for the lead in pitching wins with two. Fleser and Drall also tied for most strikeouts with 36.
With seven starts in eight game appearances, Indiana Wesleyan senior Caleb Eder finished as the team’s ERA leader with a 3.50 earned run average. A late addition to an injury riddled Scouts pitching staff, Cedarville’s Josh Wilson turned in a 2.08 ERA in his two games of work.
The GLSCL postseason tournament gets under way Tuesday, July 31 with a pair of play-in games.
In the North, the Saginaw (Mich.) Sugar Beets will take on the defending league champion Lima Locos, with the winner advancing to take on the North Division regular season champion St. Clair (Mich.) Green Giants in a best-of-three games series.
The South Division play-in game will pit the Hamilton Joes against the Cincinnati Steam, also on Tuesday. That game winner will then advance to take on the South regular season champion Southern Ohio Copperheads in a three-game playoff series.
The first game of the playoffs begins Wednesday, Aug. 1 at St. Clair and Athens.
The Championship Series will then take place beginning Saturday, Aug. 4. Depending on the distance between the two championship finalists, a possible travel day may be required between games.
